


Tale as Old as Time

by SzonKlin



Series: Halcyon [12]
Category: Beauty and the Beast - All Media Types, The Halcyon (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-15 16:22:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19299382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SzonKlin/pseuds/SzonKlin
Summary: Cursed to live as a liquor cabinet, Adil begs Lady Theresa to return Prince Toby's love and thus save him from having to live as a beast.





	Tale as Old as Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inner_tempest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inner_tempest/gifts).



> I was toying with the idea for a Beauty and the Beast AU for ages and then this morning I woke up with the basis of this scene in my mind so I decided to write it. This is purely for my own amusement, if any of you happen to enjoy it as well, then that's just a bonus.
> 
> This is also a gift for inner_tempest, hoping it makes them smile. Get better soon, dear!

Adil moved towards the edge of the forest with never failing determination. His movements grew sower and more difficult with each step, but he had to go. He knew that if he went too far from the castle and with it from the centre of the curse, he would turn into a simple liquor cabinet, but he couldn’t just stop. If he succeeded in his quest, Prince Toby and his true love could break the curse and they would all turn back into humans. If he failed, and Toby died, he would be better off loosing the last of his humanity; his consciousness.

He finally spotted his target.

“Lady Theresa!” he called out, hoping that she would come to him and he wouldn’t have to walk the next few feet that might just put him through the edge of the curse.

She eyed him warily, but finally took pity as she saw his laboured hobbling and met him halfway.

“Adil, is it?” she asked.

Adil felt the urge to roll his eyes a her. Being the only sentient liquor cabinet in the castle, he normally stayed in the same room as Prince Toby which meant he was often in the same room as Lady Theresa and she wasn’t exactly abstinent. If she had made the slightest effort it wouldn’t have been that hard to remember his name. Then again, it took her months to learn the names of Kate, Elsie, Phyllis, and Anna, even though they were in her own rooms, looking after her daily needs as her vanity, brush, wardrobe and bath.

“Yes, Milady,” he replied instead of the eyeroll. As a bartender, eyerolling wasn’t something he could allow himself to do, but the years spent at the castle with Prince Toby he became cheekier, much to Toby’s delight. However, he didn’t want to antagonise Lady Theresa any further, she was their last hope after all.

“What do you want, Adil?” the condescension was almost palpable in her voice.

“Please, call off the villagers,” Adil begged.

“It needs to be done, Adil. But don’t worry, everyone knows that the staff were only victims, you won’t be hurt and soon he will die, and the curse will be broken,” she explained, as if she was talking to a child.

Adil’s glass doors rattled with a choked back sob at hearing that.

“His death won’t break the curse,” he forced the words to come out evenly. “If he dies, all the people of the castle will remain objects for all eternity.”

“That is still a price worth paying. The people of the surrounding lands all live in fear of the beast. At least they will live freely.”

“But he never did any harm to the villages! Neither he, nor us can leave the grounds of the castle or the forest, and if someone comes onto the grounds, they remain unaffected by the course. And no harm has ever come to anyone. Moreover, he protects the people wandering in the forest from the wolves. He is no danger to anyone, he even makes life safer to the people around here,” Adil surprised even himself by how calmly he was speaking. There was no time to waste, he started to run down to Lady Theresa, grateful that he could sense her location through the castle, when saw the enraged villagers march on the castle and he was painfully aware of how slowly his wooden legs carried him. The villagers could have reached the castle by then and Prince Toby – kind, selfless, harmless Toby, who wouldn’t hurt a fly even to save his own life – would be easy prey for a mob who prepared to fight a most vicious monster. But no matter how much he wanted to shout and shake Lady Theresa, losing his temper wouldn’t help. He just had to hope she would listen to reason.

“If he was as benevolent as you try to make him out to be, why would anyone ever place such a curse on him? To be turned into such hideous beast on the outside one surely must be just as hideous on the inside,” Lady Theresa insisted.

Adil’s shook with withheld frustration, making the liquor bottles clink together on the inside. But his years of training as a servant of the royal family were not wasted and he kept on explaining things he knew were already known. “The curse was placed on King Lawrence over 10 years ago, and his death didn’t break the curse. The witch who cast it was angry at him because she felt he used her badly. She claimed that he was a horrible beast who didn’t know the meaning of love and who only saw his people as objects that he was free to abuse. And so she cast a curse on him, so that the sources of his pride, his heirs, would become literal representations of him: beasts with their servants turned into objects, and she made it so the curse could only be broken when each felt true love for someone and that true love was returned. By then, Crown Prince Frederick was already married to Princess Emma and so for him the curse was broken as soon as it was cast. But Prince Toby hadn’t found love before that, which is nothing to judge him for, he was only 19, and it hasn’t been easy since then.”

“So he forces innocent women into his castle, keeping them in captivity in hopes that it will make them fall in love with him?” Lady Theresa asked with disdain.

“But you weren’t forced, were you?” Adil asked, hanging on to the last threads of his patience, though the lacquer begun to crackle on his back panels. “Or even if you were, it wasn’t by him. Your coming here was agreed on by his mother and your parents, just as it would have been, were you to marry anyone else. And Prince Toby made it clear as soon as you arrived that you were free to come and go, or even leave as you pleased. Even the arrangement wasn’t as definite as it would have been with anyone else. With any other prince you would have been made to marry them with no say in the matter, while here with Prince Toby you only _‘have to’_ marry him if the two of you fall in love! Which would reverse the curse and he would be human again. You wouldn’t be forced to marry a beast; you would be allowed to marry the man you love.”

“But who could ever love such a beast?”

“Anyone who took a chance to get to know him could. You could! You almost did!” Adil pleaded with her. “You can’t deny that in the year you spent here you grew fond of him. You were chosen to be invited here because they thought the two of you would get on. And you did. You complained that you were never accepted in society, but he had patience and listened to you till you ran out of your nervous babbling and were comfortable enough to talk about more substantial things. He offered you infinite amounts of clothes and books, the two things you claimed to enjoy the most. The fastest horses to ride, the most beautiful garden to walk through, the scrumptious food to eat, exquisite wines to drink, priceless jewellery, all in never ending supply. And you asked for his company. He never pushed in, always waited for you to invite him in. He sent you letters till you asked to hear his voice. He hid behind corners and walked on parallel pathways till you asked to see his face. He begged you to be sure, and you swore that you were. You told him you were falling in love with him and you needed to see him to be sure. And when he finally appeared to you, at dusk and only at a distance, you got scared. But it is alright! He will understand, after all, no matter how much you dislike his appearance, he detests it so much more. He will understand that you ran away in fear, he will forgive even that you called the village against him. Just go to him! Tell him you love him and break the curse. He already loves you, he told me so himself. After the night you danced, he admitted to me that he had found his true love. Now all that remains is for you to say it too and you can be happy. You will even be grateful for the curse in the end, after all not everyone gets such an overwhelming proof that their love is true.” By the end of his speech, Adil was shaking so hard the bottles toppled over inside, the liquids streaming down his glass doors, soaking into the wooden shelves, ruining the polish, but he didn’t care. His job, his appearance, his dignity, none of it mattered. The only thing of importance was Prince Toby. That Toby survived, that Toby would get to live happily ever after with the one he loved. Adil would accept far more ruin than a few alcohol stains to ensure Toby’s happiness.

But Lady Theresa only looked at him with pity. “I know that you are scared,” her tone was sickly sweet. “You don’t want him to die, to be stuck as furniture forever with no chance of breaking the curse. And I feel for you, I truly do. But I don’t believe it is for me to sacrifice my own freedom so that a handful of servants could serve as humans again. I thought it would be romantic, to be the one to break the curse before becoming the wife of the King’s brother. But he is so much worse than I expected. He is horrifying and boring, only cares for is reading and tending his garden. Being his wife would be no different than being married to a common farmer. I am sorry you will remain furniture, but I’m sure that once he is dead, which should be any moment now, you will get a new owner, one whom you’ll be happy to serve…”

Adil couldn’t hold back any longer. His emotions took over completely, perhaps for the first time in his life. His glass doors cracking, the shelves rattling, he interrupted Lady Theresa, shouting his reply. If all hope of saving Toby was lost, the woman who took away his last chance should know the full weight of her actions, Adil would make sure of it. “You think I care if I stay a cabinet? I would be happy to remain one for ever if it saved his life. You act as if you were forced to him when all you had to do was leave, and someone else would have come along. With superficial women like yourself taking up his time, no wonder he couldn’t find love yet. But with you out of the way I’m sure it will be no time for someone who could love him and whom he could love in return to come along. I can’t imagine anyone not falling in love with him as long as they were able to look past his title and his cursed features.”

Adil’s glass doors and his golden accents reflected the light of the setting sun making Adil look like he was on fire, and Lady Theresa cowered at the realisation that the flames would consume her as well.

“It would be so easy to fall in love with him for anyone not blinded by ideas of glory like you were,” Adil insisted with unfailing vehemence. “I should know, I never even tried and I have loved him for more than a decade.”

Soon as he said those words, his doors shattered into millions of tiny shards, exploding into the air around them, some scratching the arms and face Lady Theresa who shrieked as if her injuries went beyond a few shallow cuts. The metal adornments flew off in all directions and the wooden panels were thorn into shreds, glass, metal, wood and even pieces of the ground they were standing on swirled around where he stood before, while Lady Theresa backed away, too scared to either stay or leave.

Suddenly with a burst of light the pieces disappeared and there stood Adil, as human once again. He was wearing the same livery he wore when the curse hit, though it was ragged and stained by the events of the past hour and yellowing with age.

Adil stood there, staring in confusion at the body he hasn’t seen for eleven years. But then a memory came back to him, first it was hazy and distant, as the sound of church bells can be heard from the fields, but it became clearer and clearer, the night Toby invited Lady Theresa for a dance.

Toby played the piano from behind a curtain while Lady Theresa waltzed around the ballroom on her own, laughing freely. When she finally withdrew for the night, Toby turned to Adil and said, “She will never break the curse. But it is just as well, and I cannot complain, for I feel what it is to truly love someone, and even if it will never be returned, I am happy to have felt it. I only wish _he_ didn’t have to suffer for it.”

Adil didn’t understand who ‘ _he_ ’ was then, thinking Toby must have meant his brother, who so wished for Toby to be free, and so all he did was offer a drink in reply. But Toby’s crestfallen expression took on a new meaning as soon as Adil realized the words he spoke just before the curse broke.

No sooner did the realisation hit Adil than he took off running towards Toby, practically given wings by the knowledge that finally it was in his power to give Toby his well-deserved _happily ever after._

**Author's Note:**

> I had sooo much fun trying to describe the "facial expressions" for a cabinet :D
> 
> I took elements from Aksakov's Scarlet Flower, if you like Beauty and the Beast stories, read it, it is freely available online!
> 
> If any of this made you laugh, leave me a <3 and maybe a comment!
> 
> Find me on [tumblr](szonklin.tumblr.com)


End file.
